all we have known will be an echo
by SlytherinSchoolgirl
Summary: The predictably under-attended funeral of Bellatrix Lestrange has an unexpected guest. Oneshot.


Andromeda Tonks buried her own daughter exactly two weeks ago. Exactly two weeks ago she buried her only child, the little girl who was the reason she lost it all and gained more than she could have imagined. And exactly two weeks later, Andromeda Tonks walks to a familiar cemetery. It is not the one she will be entombed in, or the one Nymphadora will be buried in. There is no burial plot or pyre for a burn mark on a tapestry.

But she could not help it. It was... it had to be done. There was no way it could _not _be done. And so she walks to the tomb that she has been to multiple times before. It reminds her of how her Aunt Walburga held a funeral for Sirius after he ran away. Andromeda went to his own funeral and had a violent panic attack as she realized that they would be picked off one by one by one.

She was right. Well, she would have been right if she were in the ground right now, rotting and being devoured by insects. But instead she is supposed to raise her grandson and give him some semblance of hope in the slowly rebuilt world.

Andromeda walks through the door, easily bypassing enchantments by right of being born. She walks, listening to the pitter patter of rain on the stone ceiling above her, past perfectly preserved bodies in beautiful, expensive robes. They all look as if they are peacefully asleep, even if they died a thousand years ago.

The walk is incredibly long and she is starting to have second thoughts by the time she reaches the main room. She has not been here in a long time and there are new bodies. New ones she _knows_, ones she has seen. One child, a toddler of maybe three who Andromeda never met but has the pitch black hair of the black family and such small red lips. When she sees the baby girl, she thinks of Teddy and her heart leaps into her throat, but before she can cry, she hears the uncomfortable whining of a boy she also never met.

He must be seventeen or eighteen by now. Andromeda remembers his birth announcement in the Daily Prophet.

_"She's the only person in our family who didn't turn out to be a royal fuck up," Andromeda comments through her cigarette and Ted cringes uncomfortably. Nymphadora is playing with her food and not bothering to eat it. "I eloped and whatever the fuck Bella's been doing for the past decade, it can't exactly be savory. Sirius is a runaway with a death warrant. Regulus is dead. And then there's Narcissa with her perfect little family and cute little blond baby. I wonder how that worked out."_

_ "Who's she?" is Nymphadora's response._

_ Ted says nothing. Andromeda does not expect him to._

_ "A woman that hopefully you will never have the displeasure of meeting, Nymphadora," Andromeda replies with a small nod as a few granules of ash fall into her coffee._

_ She drinks it anyway._

Andromeda reveals herself and Narcissa chokes. Lucius frantically looks for what she is glancing at. There are seven people at this funeral. Everyone else Bellatrix knows is imprisoned or dead. Lucius, Narcissa, their boy and a few people Andromeda vaguely recognizes as friends of the family. Not Death Eaters. Just casual acquaintances. She wonders what Lucius paid them to come here for.

"I take it I wasn't invited," Andromeda declares and Draco stares at her with his eyebrows twisted.

"You're invited," Narcissa says quietly and Lucius looks as if his wife just slapped him him. "Don't cause a fight; it's a funeral."

"Ah, well, it's not a Black Family funeral without a duel or two. Secret family? Bastard child? Something like that," Andromeda says with a small, overconfident laugh. She walks into the light of the lamps and turns to face the corpse.

And then she feels as if she has been punched in the gut. Her cavalier attitude is knocked out of her along with her breath. She gasps, chokes, tries to come to terms with herself. She saw Nymphadora dressed up in a coffin, buried an empty one for Ted, watched them all, one by one turn to dust. But this feels different. This feels wrong.

She looks... beautiful somehow. Laid out like a princess. Andromeda for a moment thinks Bellatrix Lestrange is the happiest corpse she has ever seen. And that unnerves her.

"You should not have come here," says the oh-so-arrogant voice of Lucius Malfoy and Andromeda would whip her wand out if she was not holding down vomit.

"But I did," Andromeda says softly. There is whispering amongst the congregation as Narcissa holds back her unmoving son with one arm.

Andromeda walks forward, past the man giving the funeral, who does not seem to know what to do. Time might as well have frozen as Andromeda steps towards the beautiful body of the woman who was once her hero, and then her greatest nemesis. The one who she sacrificed everything to get out of the shadow of. Bellatrix was the best at everything she did and it made Andromeda decide to be a slacker.

She killed Andromeda's daughter. She killed the niece that sometimes reminded Andromeda of Bellatrix in ways that she would laugh. They had similar mannerisms as children, and Andromeda could not get enough of the irony. Bellatrix was the reason Andromeda was spared in the end, although she thinks Bellatrix spent her whole life trying to make up for it.

"You chose wrong," Andromeda whispers to a body that can't hear her. "I probably was a better bet for you than him."

Her fingers touch the cold neck of Bellatrix Lestrange. And then the tears wash over her. She breaks down sobbing, kneeling, dropping to the floor. At first she is crying about Nymphadora and then about Bellatrix and thinking about how they would play Quidditch and fight and once she hurled a bludger directly at Bellatrix's face and she had to go the hospital.

Or maybe that time they ran after the sunset and faded into silhouettes. Trying to catch it, laughing, teenagers, barefoot.

And Andromeda tries to force that one image into her memory instead of the hollow eyes her sister developed after she joined the Death Eaters.

Or the vivid eyes she would have when she would come home high and shimmering after the nights and the sound as she would cry herself to sleep at three in the morning and Andromeda knew better than to try to console her. The way she cursed her toe off playing with the spellbooks that the Dark Lord gave her as gifts. And how Bellatrix would trace her fingertips over his handwriting in the books.

And then she could only see them on Christmas Eve, trying to figure out what each present was while they were alone. The day Bellatrix asked Andromeda to give her younger friend the notes from class and all Andromeda had in her notebook were drawings of bunnies.

Some of it only hurts when she laughs. Most of it does, actually.

Her words were like ice but she burned like firewhiskey. And Andromeda loved her. She loved her so much that they broke each other's hearts.

Andromeda's lips touch the cold, unmoving red ones of her sister's and she has residue of the red lipstick on her. Narcissa's boy covers his eyes and as Andromeda kisses a corpse again, Lucius pulls her back with his arms and she does not fight against him.

But as Lucius Malfoy lets go of her, Narcissa walks over, abandoning Draco and her friends.

_Andromeda is walking through Diagon Alley. It is half deserted these days, with the return of the Dark Lord. And she manages to get by being a pureblood and the claimed kill of a single Death Eater. No one would kill her but Bellatrix, and Andromeda did not imagine that happening anytime soon._

_ She sees someone familiar, a face she has not seen in a long time._

_ "Have you seen him?" whines Narcissa at some man Andromeda does not recognize. "We we were just at Madame Malkins and he ran off. He's in Knockturne Alley isn't he? Isn't he?"_

_ Narcissa turns and does a double take as she sees her sister. Andromeda stands still as countless families shopping for school supplies shuffle around her. _

_ She raises her hand to wave and Narcissa hesitantly waves back._

At the funeral, Narcissa wraps her arms around Andromeda and hugs her tightly.

"You're welcome to come over for tea sometime," Narcissa says softly. "You're part of the family."

Andromeda doubts Narcissa will hold true to the promise.

But she cries in her arms.


End file.
